French General Geroges Boulanger gave up coup d’etat to escape with lover
THE votes delivered toUS President Donald Trump and possibly French presidential candidate MarineLe Pen on promises of protection for farmers, small business and workers proved a less successful formula for French general Georges Boulanger.
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THE flush of votes delivered toUS President Donald Trump and possibly French presidential candidate MarineLe Pen on promises of protection for farmers, small business and workers proved a less successful formula for French general Georges Boulanger.
Boulanger, born 180 years ago, enjoyed a run of election victories from 1887 to January 1889, but is famed for his dramatic death on the grave of his lover as much as his political prowess.
Long before Le Pen, daughter of French National Front founder and holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom she effectively expelled from the party ahead of the French presidential election on May 7, Boulanger promoted populism, nationalism and defended workers’ rights.
Le Pen’s promises to protect French workers and farmers against “wild and anarchic globalisation” by ensuring jobs, welfare, housing and schools for French nationals before “foreigners” echo Boulanger’s promises to “protect industry, commerce and agriculture to give you the possibility to feed your children, raise them, and make of them good and solid workers. Boulanger will defend you against foreign competition.”
A critic of the French Third Republic, Boulanger blamed “unemployment, ruin and poverty” on “those who pass their needs, their appetites and their unhealthy ambition before your need, which they should be defending, and who see ... with a light heart the worker suffer and die of hunger. For them positions, honours, luxury, power. For you poverty!”
Nicknamed General Revanche for his promise to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, Boulanger was born in Rennes, Brittany, on April 29, 1837 to a French farmer and a Welsh mother. He joined the infantry from Saint-Cyr Military Academy, serving from 1856 in Italy, where he was wounded and received the Legion of Honour before serving in Algeria and Indo-China. He married cousin Lucie Renouard in 1864 and had two daughters, later fighting in 1870-71 in the Franco-German War, where he was promoted and noted for bravery. He was wounded early in Parisian riots against the government from March 1871. The riots followed defeat in the Franco-German War and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Parisians feared a meeting in Versailles of the National Assembly, elected with a royalist majority in February 1871 to make peace with Germany and pay reparations, would restore the monarchy.
In a “bloody week” from May 21, 1871, soldiers crushed “Communard” opposition fighting behind defensive street barricades as they burned public buildings, including City Hall and the Tuileries Palace. About 20,000 rioters died, along with
750 troops. The government then arrested 38,000 people and deported more than 7000.
Appointed brigadier general in May 1880 and director of infantry in 1882, in 1884 Boulanger was sent to Tunisia. Recalled to Paris, in January 1886 he was appointed minister of war.
The new French constitutional framework had invested power in the Chamber of Deputies, considered a political club that returned the same members year on year, often using bribes, leaving people unrepresented.
Being injured early, so not identified with massacres of ordinary people in the Paris Communes, Boulanger was considered the leader Republican opponents believed France needed.
His visit to celebrate the US independence centenary, when he refused to leave his ship until German flags onshore were removed, won popular headlines in France. Boulanger scored another masterstroke during a miners’ strike in 1886. Asked what he thought about the strike, he replied,
“at this very moment French soldiers are sharing their rations with striking workers”. Calling him General Victory, popular songs praised “our brave general, Boulanger, who will bring back Alsace and Lorraine”.
Boulanger was then the lover of Marguerite Bonnemains, attractive daughter of a wealthy businessman and divorced from the son of a general. Critics claimed Boulanger consulted her on everything from his wardrobe choices to the impact of his speeches.
After winning elections in seven different districts in 1888, Boulanger triumphed in Paris in January 1889, winning 80,000 of 400,000 votes cast. Boulanger was accused of conspiring to overthrow the Republic, and Bonnemains also threatened with arrest; Lady Randolph Churchill wrote that “his thoughts were centred in and controlled by her who was the mainspring of his life. After the plebiscite ... he rushed off to Madame Bonnemains’ house and could not
be found”.
Bonnemains fled to Brussels. Boulanger’s supporters were prosecuted under a law on secret societies. Boulanger joined Bonnemain in Brussels when his parliamentary immunity was lifted on April 4, 1889. Accused of conspiracy against internal security of the state, he was condemned in absentia to deportation by the High Court.
Bonnemains became ill in Brussels and died in Boulanger’s arms in July 1891. Plunged into deep grief, on September 30, 1891, Boulanger shot himself in front of her grave.
Originally published as French General Geroges Boulanger gave up coup d’etat to escape with lover
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